Nepal: Political tug-of-war hampers efforts to tackle COVID

As the second wave brings deaths and infections to a record high, critics say Nepal's top leadership has largely ignored the health crisis and has instead placed its primary focus on reforming the government.




Critics say Nepal's leaders have been primarily concerned with reforming the government

Amid a fatal second wave of the pandemic, with a spiraling number of new cases and deaths, the Nepali leadership has been consumed with power struggles rather than coming up with effective plans to deal with the unfolding public health disaster.

More than 834 people died and almost 50,000 tested positive for coronavirus within just five days.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Populations on Thursday said that at least 8,960 new cases and 214 deaths were recorded within the past 24 hours.

Critics say the Himalayan nation's top political leaders have been preoccupied with reforming the government. "We have been going through a tough time over the last two weeks. In the meantime, the prime minister has not been seen at many public events. He has not given much attention to the fatal second wave of the pandemic," Gagan Thapa, a former health minister and opposition parliamentarian, told DW.

He said the government is too busy covering up Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's poor management of the pandemic, rather than working actively to upgrade the healthcare system and improve access to medical and oxygen supplies.
Efforts to reshape government take precedence

On Monday, Oli sought a vote of confidence from the 275-seat House of Representatives, but failed to secure enough votes.

He secured just 93 votes, while 28 parliamentarians of his own ruling CPN-UML party didn't vote for him and remained absent. Oli had earlier garnered over two-thirds' majority support when he was sworn in as prime minister in February 2018.

Watch video 01:40 COVID-19 rages through Nepal

Oli had recommended dissolving the House of Representatives last December, but it was reinstated by the Supreme Court in February, which said the move to dissolve the legislature was unconstitutional.

After Oli lost the confidence motion, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari called on political parties to come up with a proposal to form a majority coalition government of two or more parties, within three days.

The leadership of all four political parties represented in the House — the CPN-UML, CPN-Maoist Centre, Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) and Nepal Workers' and Peasants' Party (NWPP) — were busy in internal meetings and intraparty discussions as to whether or not to keep the Oli government intact.
Oli 'could have postponed'

"The prime minister could have postponed the confidence vote for the time being, after observing the record numbers of new cases and deaths," Krishna Pokhrel, a political science professor at Tribhuvan University in Kirtipur, told DW. "Politically, the prime minister should have sought the confidence vote right after the House was reinstated in late February."

Pokhrel said that if the deadline to form a majority coalition government was missed, there would be a high chance of holding an early election within the next six months.

Former Health Minister Thapa said the prime minister failed to gauge the gravity of the unfolding public health situation, and was busy disseminating false and misleading information over the coronavirus.

Just a few months earlier, the prime minister had claimed that the coronavirus was just like a normal flu and could be wiped out by drinking and gargling herbs like turmeric and guava tree bark.

PM defends pandemic management

But while addressing the parliament, Oli defended his government's handling of the pandemic and accused the opposition party of failing to recognize the achievements made by his government.

Critics say, however, that Oli has been preoccupied with planning rallies and political meetings. Since the dissolution of the House in December, hundreds of political rallies have been organized by both the ruling and opposition parties.

Watch video 12:06 COVID-19 Special: Nepal struggles to cope as cases surge

Most of the largest rallies were led and addressed by the prime minister himself.

As late as the last week of April, when the second wave of the pandemic surged in the region, Oli was working on improvements to Kathmandu's iconic Dharahara Tower, with the presence of thousands of supporters.

Meanwhile, most public hospitals were issuing notices that they were overwhelmed with the new number of critical cases, and that they couldn't take in new patients in the absence of oxygen support, beds, ICUs and ventilators.

Additionally, Nepal's pioneering COVID hospital, the Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, has stopped conducting polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for the virus until further notice, due to a lack of supplies.

Shatosh Paudel, the head of the National Trauma Center in Kathmandu, wrote a Facebook post calling for swift management and an increase in access to oxygen supplies.

In his post, Paudel said that many patients' lives could have been saved if they had been treated on time. He added that the situation could spiral further out of control if medical supplies and oxygen were not immediately made available.

On Wednesday, another major health institution, the Bhaktapur Hospital, started having patients sign contracts that the hospital wouldn't be held responsible for their death in the absence of a sufficient supply of oxygen.

Patients dying of thirst

Samir Bohara from the northwestern city of Nepalgunj — a coronavirus hotspot along the Nepal-India border — told DW that people have also started dying due to a lack of drinking water at hospitals and isolation centers.

"Hospital beds are filled up. Patients are kept in corridors and open yards and left to wait for check-ups, in temperatures of over 35 degrees Celsius [95 degrees Fahrenheit]," said Bohara.

"They do not have enough drinking water, let alone medical oxygen and access to immediate treatment," he said.

Watch video 01:34 Nepal reeling from second wave of coronavirus

He added that even though some remote hospitals have a few ventilators on standby, those ventilators are useless due to a lack of staff qualified to operate the machines.

Jageshwor Gautam, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Population, told DW that the government was doing its best to manage the situation. He said the country is importing oxygen cylinders and ventilators from China, some of which have already arrived.

He further stated that the government has extended lockdown measures in major cities and coronavirus hotspots, including the capital city Kathmandu, for the next 15 days.

Earlier this week, the government had directed large private hospitals to install oxygen plants within the next 15 days. In response, the chairman of the Association of the Private Health Institutions of Nepal, Basanta Chaudhary, said the plan could not be sufficiently carried out within such a short span of time.

German glaciers may melt away in 10 years, study finds

Germany's five glaciers, all in Bavaria's Alps and melting faster than once forecast, could be doomed within 10 years, experts have said. Melt from glaciers is partially responsible for rising sea levels.


Walks like this on a glacier in the German Alps could be impossible in as little as 10 years

Glaciologist Christoph Mayer said Bavaria's five glaciers — combined — had already shrunk to just half a square kilometer (124 acres) of ice — the equivalent of 36 football fields, and 88% less compared to their status around 1850.

Although small, their fate as climate indicators were of "great importance," said Mayer.

The study by Bavaria's Academy of Science, its second on local glaciers since 2012, emerged as Germany's Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that the nation's climate law was insufficient to protect future generations beyond 2030.

Among the doomed ice remnants, said the study, were the two Schneeferner glaciers skirting Germany's highest peak, the Zugspitze, with its more robust northern sheet shedding 250 liters (66 gallons) of meltwater every 30 seconds.

"Bavaria's last Alpine glacier could be gone in as little as 10 years," said Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber of the Free Voter party, the junior partner in Bavarian Premier Markus Söder's Munich coalition cabinet, adding that the glaciers were melting faster than previously expected.

"The causes and reciprocal effects lie definitively in climate change," stressed Mayer.

The Bavarian study coincided with a global study, published this week in the journal Nature, showing 220,000 glaciers are losing 31% more snow and ice annually than they did 15 years earlier, with permafrost loss prompting landslides.

Already, glaciers are responsible for 21% of sea level rise — melting ice sheets across Greenland and Antarctica excluded, the study said, six months ahead of the UN's next climate conference, COP26, in Glasgow.

That accelerating glacial melt of 298 billion metric tons of ice and snow per year equated to swamping Switzerland under 7.2 meters (24 feet) of water each year, said Zurich glaciologist Romain Hugonnet.

Half of this glacial loss came in the United States and Canada, with Alaska's melt "among the highest on the planet," said the Nature article authors led by Hugonnet of Zurich's ETH University.

Even Tibetan plateau glaciers are affected, impacting millions of people who daily source water downstream, said the study.

That melting mirrored the "global increase in temperature" due to burning of coal, oil and gas, said Hugonnet.
Ever greater sea level rise

Glaciers were becoming "memorials" of the climate crisis, not just early indicators of climate change, said Michael Zemp of the World Glacier Monitoring Service.

"Sea level rise is going to be a bigger and bigger problem as we move through the 21st century," warned Mark Serreze, director of the US Snow and Ice Data Center, which makes extensive use of satellite observation tools.

ipj/sms (dpa, AP, AFP, Reuters)

Cities widely unprepared for climate risks, warns study

Almost half of 812 cities surveyed worldwide still do not have climate adaption plans despite them admitting future risks from water shortages, heat and disease.


Cities around the world need at least $72 billion (€59 billion) to finance environmental projects

Many cities lack a plan to tackle climate change, a London-based think tank said in a report on Wednesday.

Among 812 cities examined across all continents, 43% had not yet drafted climate adaption plans despite most being aware of the risks such as heatwaves and flooding, the CDP (formerly called the Carbon Disclosure Project) found. The group is backed by charities to encourage sustainable investments.

While some cities are making progress, adaption plans were "urgent" in many others to keep citizens safe in fast-expanding urban areas, the CDP stressed.

Described as the world's largest environmental database, the CDP study found that 93% of cities it examined in 2020 admitted they faced "significant risks" likely to hurt "already vulnerable populations."

City councilors witnessing wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, storms and sea level rises could "now feel this and see this," asserted Mirjam Wolfrum, the CDP policy director for Europe.

"They are already paying billions in climate hazards, and they see this as increasing," said Wolfrum, noting a 17-fold surge in cities disclosing data to CDP researchers since their first report in 2011.

Ahead of November's Glasgow COP26 conference, with the UN's 1.5-degree-Celsius climate warming cap still unmet, the CDP estimated that 400 million people will be living in poorly prepared cities by 2030.

For each city a climate risk and vulnerability assessment (CRMA) was the "key step" in identifying people, infrastructure and resources at risk, said the CDP study.

And, despite 3,417 actions to build resilience, notably greening such as tree planting, a quarter of the 812 cities blamed their inaction on "budgetary constraints."

Cities increasingly saw "potential" links between infections and climate, given the COVID-19 pandemic and the $12 trillion (€9.9 trillion) spent globally on recovery so far.
Water supplies, sanitation highly at risk

Presenting urban assets seen as "most affected" by climate change by 2050, the CDP ranked as most vulnerable, city water supplies, sanitation, public health and biodiversity.

"Close monitoring and management of this risk [infectious diseases] will be essential for cities to keep citizens safe from future pandemics," said the CDP.
Cities responsible for global emissions

Cities were responsible for some 70% of global carbon emissions attributed to climate warming and therefore they were "key actors in building a resilient future for all," said Kyra Appleby, a CDP global director.

Solutions included improved green spaces, recycling, public transport and "retrofitting" of fueled vehicles and evacuation procedures for crises.

"However, in 2020 just 50% of reporting cities were taking actions to reduce emissions in buildings, only 42% were tackling transport emissions and only 34% were taking actions to decarbonize the electricity grid," noted the CDP study.

Among climate-friendly trendsetters, it highlighted Santa Fe County in the US, Greater Manchester in Britain and Penampang in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo.

"148 cities reported having targets aligned with a 1.5-degree Celsius future," said the CDP, forecasting "this figure is set to grow."

The 812 cities surveyed needed at least $72 billion (€59 billion) to finance environmental projects, said the CDP, with three-quarters of them looking to the private sector for funding and innovation.

The cost of inaction would "greatly outweigh" potential climate-friendly investments, insisted Wolfrum.

The World Bank says global annual losses from weather-related and other disasters in cities, estimated at $314 billion in 2015, will rise to rise to $415 billion by 2030.

ipj/aw (AFP, dpa)



GLOBAL WIND DAY: THE POWER OF WIND
Ancient origins
These windmills in Nashtifan, northeastern Iran, are among the oldest in the world. Made of clay, straw and wood and standing up to 20 meters (65 feet) tall, they've been catching the area's strong winds to grind grains into flour for centuries. One of the few such windmills still in operation, they were registered as a national heritage site by Iran's Cultural Heritage Department in 2002. POTOS 1234567

Germany's more ambitious climate goals pressure industry to clean up

The 2030 targets are a "gigantic" task that will push the export-reliant economy to hasten its phase-out of coal-fired power plants and cars that run on fossil fuels.



Germany will need to move its economy away from fossil fuels sooner than planned

Chastened by its highest court and harried by young climate activists, the German government has proposed one of the biggest restructurings of any major economy as it plans to slash emissions 65% from 1990 levels by the end of the decade and hit climate neutrality by 2045.

Nine years from now, the country's energy sector should emit about 60% less than what is allowed today, according to an update to its climate law approved by the cabinet Wednesday. Greenhouse gas emissions from industry would have to fall by a third and emissions from buildings and transport by 43%. The law comes two weeks after the Constitutional Court ruled a previous version was "partly unconstitutional" because it placed too great a burden on future generations to cut emissions.

The law spells major changes in nearly every sector of the export-reliant nation. The steeper cuts will still not be enough to meet the country's obligations under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, according to environmental research organization Climate Action Tracker. But they will effectively end the burning of coal this decade and require millions more electric cars on the roads and heat pumps in buildings than previously planned.

"For the first time, the most strenuous part of climate protection is not being postponed to the distant future," said German environment minister Svenja Schulze, describing the new law as a "gigantic" task. "The Constitutional Court ordered us to do this and the government reacted very quickly."

Germany is one of the world's biggest historical emitters

Climate neutral by 2045

Analysts say the changes are challenging but achievable.

While the new law does not specify how Germany should achieve the cuts, a report published Friday by environmental think tank Agora Energiewende found that emissions could be brought to net zero by 2045 through a range of technical solutions. It puts forward cuts for each sector that broadly match up with those given for 2030 in the new law.

The report identifies several key actions that Germany could take. The country would need to get two-thirds of its energy from renewable sources by the end of the decade, invest in hydrogen to replace fossil gas, renovate buildings and install heat pumps faster, and stop making cars with internal combustion engines from 2032. Germany would also need to suck pollution out of industrial sites and store it in the ground. The report estimates that 73 million tons of CO2 will need to be removed through carbon-capture technology by 2045, up from zero today.

The foundation of all these actions is building more renewables, said Agora Energiewende's director of industry Frank Peter, who worked on the analysis with two other German think tanks, the Climate Neutrality Foundation and Agora Verkehrswende. "That's where this current government must immediately do their homework."

Export nation

Last month, leaders of several polluting economies backed up their mid-century climate goals with plans to cut emissions in the medium term too. The UK said it will cut emissions 78% from 1990 levels by 2035. The US pledged to halve emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. Japan and Canada announced cuts of just over 40% for the same date relative to 2013 and 2005 levels respectively.

But Germany, more than most other historical polluters, must redesign an economy built upon the manufacture and export of goods made with fossil fuels or designed to burn them.

The government is neither keeping to planetary boundaries nor explaining how its goals can be achieved in a socially just way, said Line Niedeggen, a climate activist with the German branch of the Fridays for Future protest movement that took the government to court over the climate law. "A fair restructuring of the economy is possible if it's communicated clearly and honestly."

Industrial processes like steel manufacturing will need to cut out fossil fuels

Criticizing the ruling of the Constitutional Court, German daily newspaper Die Welt said the new climate law would lead to "the end of Germany as an export nation." Jörg Hofmann, the head of the country's biggest workers' union IG Metall, said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper Friday that "climate protection only threatens jobs if we go about it the wrong way." He warned against companies using the transition as an excuse to outsource factories abroad and called for early policies to support struggling companies.

Siegfried Russwurm, President of the Federation of German Industries, called for policy makers to work with businesses to build a climate-neutral industrial country. "Companies are deciding today on the production facilities of 2040. So they need to know now which energy sources they can use to operate their plants then."

The German government is planning to help its industries transition with support of up to €8 billion that will be discussed in the next weeks.

Luisa Neubauer, pictured second-from-the-left alongside Greta Thunberg, is one of several activists who filed the court case that argued Germany's old climate law was unconstitutional

Cleaning up cars

Germany's transport emissions have stayed stubbornly high even as other sectors have cleaned up. In 2019 they were at the same level as in 1990, dropping only in 2020 as coronavirus lockdowns slowed travel."It will require a drastic change of trend," said Giulio Mattioli, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund.

The average vehicle in Germany's fleet is 9.6 years old, which means that a car sold today will likely still be on the road by the end of the decade. Germany also has just 42,000 charging stations for electric vehicles, according to the regulatory body for gas and electricity markets, the Federal Network Agency. To add 14 million more electric cars by 2030, it would need to massively expand its infrastructure to charge them.

There are currently fewer than half a million electric vehicles in Germany's fleet of 60 million.

As well as phasing out cars with internal combustion engines, said Mattioli, the government will find it "increasingly difficult" to dismiss measures like a generalized motorway speed limit that would help cut emissions. "This is a low-hanging fruit."

It is unclear whether the new laws will help to protect villages set to be destroyed to make way for coal mines

Cutting out coal

The push for a socially just transition also applies to coal.

Before the new 2030 target, Germany clung to a 2038 deadline of closing its coal plants that scientists say is incompatible with the Paris Agreement and which lags behind the rest of Europe.

This means coal communities will have less time to adapt, said Pao-Yu Oei, a professor of sustainable energy transitions at the Europe University of Flensburg.

A study Oei co-authored in the journal Climate Policy in 2020 looked for lessons from Germany's phase-out of hard coal mining in the Ruhr and Saarland regions in which not a single miner was fired. It found that a faster transition would have been cheaper and more efficient because it would have avoided propping up a dying technology, not given coal regions false hope and left more room to directly act to support miners and their families.

"Their politicians had kept denying the inevitable truth for too long," said Oei.

COVID: Over 25% of EU adults unlikely to take vaccine

A significant proportion of adults in the European Union are unlikely to get the coronavirus vaccine when it is offered to them. The degree of vaccine hesitancy appeared to be linked to their use of social media.


The study showed that Bulgaria had the highest level of vaccine hesitancy

A quarter of adults who said they were unlikely to take the COVID-19 vaccine were also likely to rely more heavily on social media, according to a study published on Thursday.

There was also an apparent east-west divide between respondents across Europe, according to research published by the EU agency Eurofound.
What the results showed

More than a quarter, 27%, of people surveyed across the EU said they were either rather unlikely or very unlikely to have the jab.

Men were slightly more vaccine skeptical (29%) than women (25%).

The actual intention to get vaccinated — people who said they were rather likely or very likely to have it — was above 60% in all western member states except for France (48.7%) and Austria (56.8%). In Germany, the figure was just over 61%.

Nordic and Mediterranean countries had higher rates, with Ireland (86.5%), Denmark (86.1%) and Malta (84%) topping the list.

Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Finland also had rates above 80%.

However, there was a much lower rate of planned uptake in eastern countries.

Those figures ranged from 59% in Romania to the lowest figure of 33% in Bulgaria, where more than 60% were either rather unlikely or very unlikely to have the jab.

The survey found that the main influence on vaccine hesitancy was the time spent on social media, as well as the nature of the medium used. The proportion of people unlikely to take the vaccine rises to 40% among those who use social media as their primary source of news.

Among people who also rely on traditional media including press, radio and television, only about 18% were vaccine skeptics.

The figures showed there was a greater reluctance to take the vaccine in the age range from 35 to 49 years compared with older and younger people.

Students, employed or retired people were less vaccine hesitant than average, while unemployed people and individuals with a long-term disease were more hesitant. Students were the least skeptical group of all.

Daphne Ahrendt, a Eurofound senior research manager, said the results highlighted the importance of clear communication around the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

"Vaccines play a crucial role in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, these findings reflect a failure to deliver persuasive and clear communication regarding the efficacy and safety of vaccines," she said.

"Trust in vaccines is related to trust in institutions, and this is an issue primarily for policymakers, but we also all have a collective responsibility, across society, to ensure that we communicate and publish accurate and sound information on the safety and importance of vaccines."

Almost 47,000 people responded to the e-survey between February and March this year.

STALINIST STATE CAPITALISM

COVID: Cambodia's harsh lockdown aggravates food insecurity

Efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus have left many Cambodians without access to food, essential medicines and other necessities for weeks.


Cambodia imposed one of the harshest lockdowns this year to curb the virus' spread


After having seemingly triumphed over the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, recording just 366 cases in total last year, Cambodia has been sent into a tailspin. The setback follows a major outbreak on February 20, which has now seen cumulative case numbers rise above 20,000 and more than 130 deaths.

As infections spiked, on April 15 the government and local authorities put much of the capital, Phnom Penh, and nearby Takhmao under strict lockdown, with residents of the worst-hit areas even banned from leaving their homes to purchase food.

Businesses closed, markets were ordered to shut and street-side vendors were banned, leading many to accuse the government of causing a humanitarian crisis. Some even said people were close to starvation in the capital city.

On the streets of Phnom Penh, where public protests are rarely allowed by the authorities, residents demonstrated against the lockdown measures. They claimed they were unable to access food supplies even after the government promised to provide free food parcels to all households.

Fears of widespread food insecurity have diminished since last week when, because of economic and political pressure, the government announced that some of the strictest of lockdown measures were ending, despite infection numbers still rising at the time.
Lockdown causes severe hardships

Under a three-color restriction system, which has also been rolled out to other areas of the country hardest hit by the pandemic, residents living in the designated "red zones" in the cities are banned from leaving their homes to even purchase food.

Residents living in the designated 'red zones' are banned from leaving their homes, even to purchase food

Even for residents in the "orange" and "yellow" zones, where restrictions are looser, food markets have been closed and access to basic staples is difficult.

Data from government ministries suggest that food prices have increased since the strict lockdown measures were imposed in mid-April. In the red and orange zones, work at the country's vital garment manufacturing factories also ground to a halt, with employees furloughed on less than half their minimum wage.

PRECARIOUS WORK IS THE GIG ECONOMY
Hardest-hit have been workers in the informal sector, which makes up more than half of the country's entire workforce, who faced the brunt of Cambodia's financial woes last year as the economy contracted by around 3.1%, according to the Asian Development Bank.

At the end of April, Prime Minister Hun Sen promised that any poor household living under a lockdown restriction could apply for a one-off cash handout from the government. He later retracted this promise, given that this applied to more than 100,000 households, and instead vowed to provide them with food parcels delivered by the government or the ruling party-aligned charities.

On April 29, more than 100 people protested in the streets of Phnom Penh's Meanchey district over claims they were going hungry. A separate protest the next day ended when the authorities arrived with food donations.

The following weekend, Amnesty International warned that Cambodia's "mismanaged lockdown has brought them to the precipice of a humanitarian crisis."

The government rejected this criticism. "In Cambodia, no Cambodian is starving yet," the ruling party's spokesman Sok Eysan told local media on May 2. "COVID-19 has had devastating consequences for people and workers in every country in the world."

However, the pressure was building on the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), which has been in power since 1979 and now rules the country as a de facto one-party state, after forcibly dissolving the largest opposition party in 2017 on spurious charges of plotting a US-backed coup.

As businesses closed and street-side vendors were banned, many accused authorities of causing a humanitarian crisis

At midnight on May 5, the government's lockdown measures across several cities came to an end after the prime minister intervened to appease public opposition to the severity of the restrictions. A ban on all inter-provincial travel also ended last week.

"There is no reason to lock down Phnom Penh and any province anymore. We will reopen the lockdown area, except that a province or capital can close a small area which has a high risk of coronavirus spread," Hun Sen wrote on his Facebook page.
'Sporadic decisions led to costly missteps'

Since last week, local authorities have been given greater powers to enforce the three-color lockdown scheme in a more localized mode.

"Initially, the government made sporadic decisions leading to costly missteps. The new measures are much more reasonable and mechanisms to distribute food seem to have improved," Ou Virak, president of the Phnom Penh-based Future Forum think tank, told DW.

"It is easier to target food donations as well as allow some people to go back to work and carry on with their lives, easing both the economic pressure and potential political ones," he added.

Sophal Ear, an associate professor at the US-based Occidental College, also notes that the situation has improved, but added: "It's appalling that it required a five-alarm reaction by Amnesty International and others to cause the authorities to wake up to the fact that a three-week lockdown would lead to a crisis."

As case numbers spiked in April, the Cambodian authorities thought they could simply enforce the strictest of lockdowns like the Chinese authorities did in Wuhan, Sophal Ear told DW. "And they did it," he added, "minus the fact that they were so disorganized."

On May 5, the lockdown measures came to an end after Prime Minister Hun Sen intervened to appease public opposition

Government's actions 'reasonable and responsible'

Not everyone, however, agrees that Cambodia faced such a food insecurity crisis as some made out.

"Initial reports of the food supply realities in the red zones of Phnom Penh were gross overreactions and depicted a very narrow understanding, if any, of the realities on the ground here in Phnom Penh," said a source with knowledge of government policy, who asked not to be named.

"Naturally, there are areas where the rollout could have been more effective, but overall the government's actions have been both reasonable and responsible."

According to the source, one of the most significant changes was last week's removal of restrictions on Phnom Penh and Takhmao residents from travelling to different provinces.

In normal times of crisis, when access to employment and food is precarious, many urban residents will return to their provincial homes where they can work on farms and grow their own food.

"The lifting of the interprovincial travel ban has resolved this impediment," the source said.

However, there are still major concerns that food insecurity could become a problem again if the authorities are forced to reimpose wider lockdowns across cities.

"I'm sure the authorities will consider another lockdown without batting an eyelid; right now the authorities feel all powerful, very much like Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party. That's dangerous, for everyone," Sophal Ear said.

Food insecurity remains a concern

New daily infection numbers have decreased since a peak of 938 on May 4. They fell to 506 new cases on May 10 and 480 the following day.

"While lockdown measures have been lifted in many areas, red zones remain under strict lockdown and we understand that many people remain at severe risk of deprivation and hunger in these locations," said Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty International's deputy regional director for campaigns.

Anita Dullard, the International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson in Asia-Pacific, said that the situation is changing very quickly and by the day.

"While some people have returned to work, there are others who still face restrictions. For many low-paid workers, any disruption in wages or loss of income is likely to be felt for a long time as arrears in rent payments and utility bills can quickly spiral to unmanageable levels," Dullard told DW.

"As long as markets are closed, inaccessible or unaffordable, food insecurity is likely to remain a concern for many."

Moreover, there are concerns that food insecurity could spike in specific areas, such as prisons. "We are alarmed by recent reports of a COVID-19 outbreak in Sihanoukville prison," said Yu Hah of Amnesty, referring to a large city on Cambodia's southern coast.

"A COVID outbreak in Cambodian jails could be catastrophic from a public health and human rights perspective, given the severe overcrowding and unsanitary conditions which abound in these prisons."

China's COVID-19 disinformation push, aided by Canadian group, raises concerns about next pandemic

As it claims to have snuffed out local transmission of COVID-19, the regime is casting the pandemic in a dramatically new light

Author of the article: Tom Blackwell
Publishing date: Mar 28, 2020 •

Chinese commuters wear protective masks as they line up in a staggered formation while waiting for a bus at the end of the work day on March 20, 2020 in Beijing, China. PHOTO BY KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

It’s safe to say China’s foreign ministry does not often pay much attention to obscure Canadian research organizations run by conspiracy theorists.

But earlier this month the ministry’s spokesman tweeted in English not once but three times about two surprising articles from the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalisation.

“This is so astonishing that it changed many things I used to believe in,” Lijian Zhao wrote to 500,000 followers on a social-media platform his fellow Chinese are banned from using. “Please retweet to let more people know about it.”

The “astonishing” piece suggested that COVID-19 did not originate in Wuhan, China, as Chinese and other scientists have reported, but was brought to Wuhan by American soldiers last November.


This is so astonishing

Despite the dubious source, Zhao tweeted about another article on the institute’s website — a hotbed of 911-deniers and champions of Vladimir Putin’s worldview — and then tweeted “it might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent!”.

IT IS AN ANTI IMPERIALIST SITE AGAINST CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION

Beijing and its media outlets did not stop there. They’ve also suggested recently the virus might have originated in Italy, and that a Wuhan doctor arrested after raising the alarm about the new virus — only to later die from it — was a Communist Party hero, not an inconvenient whistleblower silenced by the state.

Only a couple of months ago, China was pilloried for initially covering up and then underplaying the newly emerging coronavirus.

But as it emerges from a strict lockdown and claims to have snuffed out local transmission of COVID-19, the regime is casting the pandemic in a dramatically new light. It’s one that reflects brightly on the government of President Xi Jinping — and raises worrisome questions about the likelihood of China making changes that might prevent the next pandemic.

“The Chinese Communist Party sees itself as engaged in a global competition over the narrative surrounding COVID-19, its origins and government responses,” says Julian Gewirtz, Harvard-affiliated author of Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists and the Making of Global China.

“The disinformation, the conspiracy theory peddling and the wild and unsubstantiated accusations are prime examples.”

This photo taken on March 18, 2020 shows residents reacting below a banner of appreciation as members of a medical assistance team from Yunnan province depart after helping with the COVID-19 coronavirus recovery effort in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province. PHOTO BY STR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

China’s role in the beginnings of the pandemic has, of course, become political fodder in the United States, where President Donald Trump insists on ignoring the medical name of the new disease, calling it the “Chinese virus” instead.

Increased reports of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in the U.S. have followed. China is a convenient scapegoat now that the U.S. actually has more COVID-19 cases, a soaring death toll and overwhelmed hospitals in some places.

Meanwhile, China has received widespread praise for its eventual, aggressive response to the new virus, imposing a massive quarantine around the epicenter in Wuhan that helped at least slow the virus’s spread elsewhere. Chinese scientists have also been key in isolating the pathogen and mapping out its unique qualities.

The origins of the pandemic are a complex question best left to scientists, said China’s embassy to Canada in an email response to National Post questions.

“People of the world have all witnessed that it is under the leadership of the CPC (Communist Party of China) that the Chinese people achieved independence, freedom and liberation and made enormous progress in national development,” said the mission’s statement. “It is also under the leadership of the CPC that the Chinese nation united as one and speedily fought against COVID-19, buying precious time for the global response.”

The Chinese Communist Party sees itself as engaged in a global competition over the narrative surrounding COVID-19, its origins and government responses

But beyond name-calling by the U.S. and chest-thumping by China, there are clear reasons to look toward Beijing and its part in the expanding crisis, reasons that could determine if the world faces a similar calamity in the near future.

While the precise genesis of the disease is still something of a question mark, the current consensus reflects the conclusions of a group of 34 Chinese researchers, and one Australian, in the journal Lancet late last month.

The coronavirus, like others of its type, seems to have originated in bats, then jumped to live animals sold at a market in Wuhan, the specific culprit likely being an odd beast called a pangolin, and from there to humans, their paper concluded. Microbiologist David Kelvin of Dalhousie University, who has had a longstanding collaboration with researchers in Shantou, China, agrees.


It’s not totally implausible that it might have been circulating in humans earlier somewhere else — like Italy, he said. A “sero-prevalance” study that tested banked blood samples from well before the start of the pandemic might determine if there’s anything to the theory

.

A Chinese commuter wears a protective mask while riding through a nearly empty intersection during the afternoon rush hour on March 6, 2020 in Beijing, China. PHOTO BY KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

But, he said, “the data right now suggest that the origins are Chinese.”

In that regard, COVID-19 has obvious parallels.

The 2003 SARS virus, to which the new virus is closely related, is thought to have originated in bats, then leapt to animals sold at live markets in China’s Guangdong province — probably the civet cat — and on to people.

The H7N9 influenza virus, which has caused a string of relatively small but deadly epidemics in China, likewise moved from bats to wild fowl and then domestic poultry bought live by consumers, Kelvin said.

Wild animal sales were ordered stopped after SARS, then re-emerged. Beijing has now banned trade in live wild animals like the pangolin for food, though apparently not for use in traditional medicine.

Live wild game sales in China and other countries must be ended completely, otherwise “we predict with confidence that COVID-19 will not be the last viral pandemic,” virologist Nathan Wolf and “Guns, Germs and Steel” author Jared Diamond wrote in a recent op-ed article.

Some want a crackdown to go further. Wet markets, generally, even if just selling domestic animals, should be closed, says Kelvin.

Meanwhile, another human factor also seemed key to the spread of COVID-19. As doctors in Wuhan first became aware in December of patients suffering a mystery pneumonia — and infecting health-care workers — some put out the word to colleagues. But then eight of them, including ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, were brought in by police and accused of spreading false rumours. Li died from COVID-19 in February.

When officials publicly acknowledged the emergence of a novel pathogen, they at first played down its seriousness, questioning whether it could be transmitted between humans. A holiday banquet of 40,000 people went ahead in Wuhan on Jan. 13.

The Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto Internet watchdog, later reported that a Chinese live-streaming platform started blocking key words related to the outbreak in late December, with broader censorship following that.

Wuhan was eventually sealed off from the world on Jan. 23, inside a cordon sanitaire of unprecedented scale. Amid the initial suppression, virus carriers had already left the transportation hub in droves. The first Canadian case, a traveller who had visited the city, surfaced Jan. 26.

The emergence of COVID-19 was at first a public-relations disaster for China, an emerging superpower keen to bolster its international influence and prestige.

A woman wearing a face mask walks past a poster of late Li Wenliang, a Chinese ophthalmologist who died of coronavirus at a hospital in Wuhan, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Prague, Czech Republic, March 27, 2020. PHOTO BY REUTERS/DAVID W CERNY

Then it began trying to change the conversation, and the pandemic’s core facts.

Among the first, startling examples was Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao’s posts earlier this month.

One of the Montreal centre’s articles he tweeted about suggested that American soldiers who visited the World Military Games in Wuhan in December might have brought over the virus. Another suggested they caught the bug from a shuttered U.S. disease lab.

The centre’s website, globalresearch.ca, is replete with such conspiracy theories, including claims that Al Qaeda and the 911 attacks were an American invention, that the U.S. manipulates the weather as a potential weapon of mass destruction and vaccines are “genetic poisons.”

The website earlier came to the attention of the Latvia-based Strategic Communications Centre (StratCom), a NATO-affiliated thinktank, because of its consistent dissemination of articles reflecting Kremlin propaganda. A recent piece suggested NATO was preparing to attack Russia.

Those articles tend to reflect disinformation that was originally spread by Russian operatives. Then, to bolster the legitimacy of the dubious reports in a sort of “information laundering,” the Canadian items are quoted back by Kremlin-controlled media, Janis Sarts, StratCom’s director, said in an interview Friday.

“When Russia needs to refer to a Western source, this is typically the site that is quoted,” he said.

In a similar vein, the site’s articles on COVID-19 quote extensively from the Chinese Communist party’s Global Times, only to be later cited by a Beijing official.

For those not convinced the pandemic originated in the U.S., state-controlled media like the Global Times and CGTN have proffered another suggestion: that it began last November in Italy.

We have not seen the last Li Wenliang

But when Italian newspaper Il Foglio reached the supposed Italian source for one such report, the pharmacology professor told the outlet “it’s propaganda. The virus is from Wuhan. Science has no doubt about that.”

Then there is the reinvention of Li Wenliang’s tragic story. His death triggered an outpouring of public grief and anger at authorities “unlike anything else I can remember,” said Gerwitz.

That was before the regime claimed him as one of its own. Local police were punished for unfairly persecuting him and official organs described him as a loyal party member.

So how does all this bode for the future? If another new virus emerges within its borders, will China be more transparent, allowing public health to quickly and definitively stop the germ before it spreads? Will traditional food commerce be changed for good?

Gerwitz says all countries, and particularly his own, need to be held accountable for how they handled the pandemic, which has killed over 1,000 Americans under a president who also once downplayed its gravity.

As for China, though, he’s not overly optimistic.

Rather than make the necessary changes, Beijing may see the crisis as a reason to intensify even further its surveillance and control of the population.

“We have not seen the last Li Wenliang,” Gerwitz said of the doctor whistleblower. “The question his case raises is whether the next Li Wenliang will even have the opportunity to send that first message.”

Singapore researchers control Venus flytraps using smartphones

"If the plant can talk back to us, maybe growing all these plants may be even easier"

By Lee Ying Shan 

© Reuters/JOSEPH CAMPBELL A Venus flytrap is seen rigged with two electrodes during an experiment in a lab at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Researchers in Singapore have found a way of controlling a Venus flytrap using electric signals from a smartphone, an innovation they hope will have a range of uses from robotics to employing the plants as environmental sensors.

Luo Yifei, a researcher at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU), showed in a demonstration how a signal from a smartphone app sent to tiny electrodes attached to the plant could make its trap close as it does when catching a fly.

"Plants are like humans, they generate electric signals, like the ECG (electrocardiogram) from our hearts," said Luo, who works at NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering.

"We developed a non-invasive technology to detect these electric signals from the surface of plants without damaging them," Luo said.

The scientists have also detached the trap portion of the Venus flytrap and attached it to a robotic arm so it can, when given a signal, grip something thin and light like a piece of wire.

In this way, the plant could be used as a "soft robot", the scientists say, to pick up fragile things that might be damaged by industrial grippers, as well as being more environmentally friendly.

Communication between humans and plants is not necessarily entirely one-way.

The NTU research team hopes their technology can be used to detect signals from plants about abnormalities or potential diseases before full-blown symptoms appear.

"We are exploring using plants as living sensors to monitor environmental pollution like gas, toxic gas, or water pollution," said Luo, who stressed there was a long way to go before such plant technology could be used commercially.

But for Darren Ng, an enthusiast of the carnivorous plants and founder of SG VenusFlytrap, a group that sells the plants and offers care tips, the research is welcome.

"If the plant can talk back to us, maybe growing all these plants may be even easier," he says.

(Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Karishma Singh and Stephen Coates)

RIP

Pervis Staples, member of famed Staple Singers, dead at 85

CHICAGO (AP) — Pervis Staples, whose tenor voice complimented his father’s and sisters’ in the legendary gospel group The Staple Singers, has died, a spokesman announced Wednesday. He was 85.

 Provided by The Canadian Press

Pervis Staples died May 6 at his home in Dolton, Illinois, according to Adam Ayers, a spokesman for Staples' sister, Mavis Staples. The cause of death wasn’t given.

Pervis Staples sang gospel songs with his father, the guitar-playing Roebuck "Pops” Staples, and sisters Mavis, Yvonne and Cleotha in Chicago churches before gaining a national following when they began recording songs such as “So Soon,” “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and “Uncloudy Day” for Vee Jay records in the 1950s.

The group gained fame in the 1960s by singing music that urged change on a variety of social and religious issues. The Staple Singers gained a huge audience with their first No. 1 hit, “I’ll Take You There” in 1972 and followed with top 40 hits “Respect Yourself,” “Heavy Makes You Happy,” and “If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me).”

However, Pervis’ last album with The Staple Singers was their first for Stax Records, "Soul Folks in Action” in 1968. The album featured new songs such as “The Ghetto” and their interpretations of tunes like Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” and The Band’s “The Weight.” He went on to manage the girl group The Emotions and operated a popular nightclub, Perv’s House.

Pervis Staples was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his family in 1999. The group also received a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys in 2005.

Mavis Staples, the lone survivor of the group, said in a statement that her brother’s childhood was filled with wonderful experiences.

“He liked to think of this period of his life as setting the stage for all that he wanted to do in life,” she said. "Some of Pervis’ best friends as a youngster included Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls, and Jerry Butler. Pervis and the guys would stand under the lamp posts in the summertime singing doo-wop songs.”

Despite the success of Rawls and Cooke, Roebuck Staples routinely rejected offers to the group to record rhythm and blues, saying it was in conflict with his faith. However, it was with the nudging of Pervis Staples that the group compromised by performing message music in the 1960s, performing at music festivals around the country.

Pervis Staples was born November 18, 1935 in Drew, Mississippi. He and his family moved to Chicago for economic opportunities. That is where Roebuck Staples started teaching his children gospel songs to entertain them and occupy their time.

Pervis Staples was preceded in death by his parents, Roebuck and Oceola; and three sisters, Cynthia, Cleotha, and Yvonne. He is survived by his six children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Funeral services will be held Monday in Chicago.

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This story has been corrected to show that Staples died in Dolton, Illinois.

Herbert G. Mccann, The Associated Press

  

Archaeologists in Kenya discover oldest known human burial site in Africa

Issued on: 13/05/2021 -



In Kenya, researchers have discovered the grave of a child from 78,000 years ago, making it the earliest known human burial site in Africa. The discovery is helping archaeologists understand emotional life in the early days of Homo Sapiens. The child, whose gender remains unknown, has been named “Toto”.